September 21, 2004

Could you use a simple way to handle your child-related divorce decrees? If so, KidsNCommon may have the answer: the site offers an easy-to-use online tool that can make the job easier while reducing some of the emotional hardship divorce can bring. The site promises to let you:

schedule shared bills, and events;

communicate via online messages;

share documents; and

join an online community for support.

Two plans are available: one for parents and other supporting family members (free), and a premier plan ($99). The premiere plan allows you to provide access to advisors and attorneys, useful for sharing documents with your former spouse. Whether you choose the free or fee version, according to the site, you must be a parent to use KidsNCommon. If you try it, please post your experience here for other Gate 3 members to read.

September 17, 2004

Google's marketing and financial success crowns it as the current king of the search hill, but that does not mean there are no contenders for the crown. Here are a couple a couple of search engines that are not really new, but have became more popular, judging by their traffic and the references they pick up in blogs. I would give these guys a run, just out of appreciation for the sheer determination they display in getting into an arena crowded by giants. Well, on a closer inspection, one of them is actually backed by a giant. In any case, these two believe that they have something new to offer in a realm where most of us are quite happy with what we already have.

September 11, 2004

If you are responsible for the care of an elderly parent or relative, either directly or indirectly, you may be struggling with balancing those demands with those of your work, your children and your partner. If so, you are not alone. Estimates for California show that there may be as many as 1.8 million families that care for someone age 50 or over.

According to the National Family Caregivers Association, some 47% of family caregivers are employed. Of those, nearly three-quarters work full-time. And if you run your own business, there's a good chance that you define "full-time" in excess of 60 hours a week. A recent survey* of working adults who are caring for elderly relatives showed the following results:

26% said taking care of financial and legal concerns as the biggest cause of stress;

20% chose providing day-to-day assistance; and

8% cited spending time on the phone or in person with their elderly relative.

While you may not be able to afford the types of employee assistance programs of large corporations, here are resources you (and your employees if you have them) can turn to that will provide you with information and support.

September 10, 2004

Life Balance for Palm was developed by a computer professional who grew tired of having the borders between her life and work become blurry. So she coded a time management application. Right? Not exactly. Well, Life Balance can be seen as a time and task management program. It does handle tasks and appointments. However, unlike most such applications, it has left the paradigm of the scheduled date book altogether. In Life Balance, there is no ledger book – instead, it boldly moved towards a non-linear model, and proposes using a complex tree of tasks starting from life goals and ending in minute tasks. The too-complex-to-comprehend tree is dynamically sorted, and the important tasks for a certain time and place bubble up to the surface. “Life Balance helps you focus on what is important to you and actively balance the often-conflicting demands of career and personal life”, the creators of the software program say. We are dealing here with a new breed of application, and I agree to its creators definition: it is coaching software.

September 03, 2004

With over 10 million copies sold since it was published in 1990, Stephen Covey's "Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People" became a time management classic. Few professionals and managers interested in time management have not heard of Covey's "four quadrants" system for time allocation. Covey's basic suggestion: divide all activities to Important and Urgent, Important and Not Urgent, Not Important and Urgent, and Not Important and Not Urgent. Learning how to place tasks into the quadrants, and how to then allocate time to quadrants, is the key to effective time management. Successful people often excel in handling Important and Not Urgent tasks, so that they have less in the Urgency department.

Now, if you have Palm (or Palm OS device, or a Treo smart phone), you probably use some of its time management utilities - namely, its built-in Date Book and To Do List. These two applications are prepackaged with Palm devices since 1998. However, Palm’s scheduling utilities - just like most other time management tools - do not make use of Covey's time management ideas. In my workshops and in my private consulting, I teach about tools that try to make our scheduling smarter. I found seven utilities to do a great job.